Alcohol

Indian alcohol abuse

What theories that have been advanced to explain Indians’ supposed proclivity to drunkenness?Was drunkenness a reaction to the trauma and demoralisation of conquest? Can it be explained by the introduction of new and unfamiliar European drinks with a higher alcohol content than native beverages? Can cultural and genetic factors account for the Indians’ apparent susceptibility to excessive drinking and inebriation?

Alcohol and Subversion

What was the relationship between alcohol and violence in Spanish America?Could drinking lead to political sedition? What measures were taken by the authorities to control drinking in Spanish America? Why did they generally fail?

Pre-Columbian drinking

Who was allowed to drink in American society before the conquest?

What did they drink?

When and how much did they drink?

Pulque

Main alcoholic drink in Mexico prior to the conquest.

Came from fermented juice of the maguey plant.

Contains around 4% alcohol.

Believed to have medicinal properties.

Extracted from maguey by tlachiquero.

Left to ferment.

Roots and herbs added to enhance strength – e.g. cuapatle, a type of tree bark.

Pulque drunk in religious ceremonies.

Pulque Goddess Magahuel.

Pulque given as tribute

Restrictions on who could drink pulque among Aztecs.Consumption confined to warriors and nobles.Commoners could not drink it, and could be punished if they did.Priests forbidden from drinking.Other Indian societies less strict about drinking.

Most drinking done during ceremonies.

Heavy drinking normal but sporadic.

Drunkenness not seen as shameful.

Post-conquest drinking

How did the Spanish conquest affect Indian drinking patterns?

Was there more drinking after the conquest?

Did increased drinking contribute to destructive social behaviour?

Drinking no longer confined to the elite – like chocolate.

More daily drinking at taverns or pulquerias.

New types of drink – e.g. wine and aguardiente (rum).

‘The men of Ocelotepec were said to spend all their gold on wine’.

Colonising discourse

Indians not really drunkards

Image of drunken Indian fabricated by Spaniards to denigrate Indians and justify conquest.

Drunkenness a sign of barbarity.

Ernesto Restrepo Tirado (Colombia, 1892): ‘The mere number of drunken orgies mentioned by the chroniclers of the fiestas of the Indians leads us to form quickly a very unfavourable impression of them. Liquor was the fundamental base of every celebration, and when the liquor ran out, the function finished’. Francisco Moreno (Argentina, 1870): Patagonian Indians spend their lives in ‘uncontrolled binges and drink for days and weeks on end’.

Trauma of conquest

Indians drank to obliterate suffering of the conquest.

Heavy drinking evidences disruption, death and despair engendered by subjugation and disease.

Alcoholism the result of demoralisation.

Clorinda Matto de Turner (Peru) Indians ‘sometimes get drunk, in order to forget their miseries’.Ecuadorian writer Pio Jaramillo (Ecuador): Indian drunkenness a natural consequence of the ‘bitterness [felt] by a defeated race’.José Martí (Cuba): Indians were ‘drunkards and theives’ because ‘we [i.e. the Spaniards] ‘made them that way. In order to console themselves, to escape reality, they chew coca leaves and drink rum, the two poisons of their race’.

[1] Aves sin nido cited in Nina Scott, ‘Juan Manuela Gorriti’s Cocina Ecléctica: Recipes as Feminine Discourse’, Hispania 75:2 (1992), 312.[2] Pio Jaramillo Alvarado, El indio ecuatoriano. Contribución al estudio de la sociología nacional (Quito, 1925), I:230-1.[3] Ventura García Calderón, ‘Un loable esfuerzo por el arte incaico’, 1927, La polémica del indigenismo, comp. Aquézolo Castro, 64.

Cultural differences

Allegations of Indian drunkenness stem from different drinking patterns.Indians drink periodically but to the point of inebriation.Spaniards drink often but in moderation and see drunkenness as shameful - ‘the most disgraceful epithet you can fasten on a man is to call him a drunkard; it is also true that they are very rarely met with’.New drinks also encourage greater alcohol consumption

[1] ‘Account of a Journey to Madrid’, La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, Wednesday April 1, 1807; Issue 16

Some Indians adapt to Spanish customs. Mexican cacique, Don Fernando Tapia apparently ‘ate and drank in the Spanish manner with his high table, chairs and tablecloths’ and never got drunk, even though he always had ‘1 or 2 casks of wine ready in his cellar’.Ranquel Indians in southern Argentina engaged in heavy drinking bouts. Lucio Mansilla states that they ‘do not eat while drinking’ and drink until they are virtually unconscious. ‘They will drink for an hour, a day, two days two months. They are capable of drinking until they burst’.[1]

[1] Lucio Mansilla, A Visit to the Ranquel Indians, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1997, p.137

Genetic factors?

Are they genetic reasons for alcoholism?

Various theories. Some scientists think Native Americans actually have a gene that makes them able to drink more.

Others think Indians are more sensitive to alcohol’s effects.

Nothing conclusive, and anyway racial distinctions are hard to define biologically.

Subversion and violence

Excessive drinking blamed for crime and violence.Drinking often mentioned as a factor in murder trials, though Taylor claims Indians may have used it as an excuse for their behaviour in order to get a more lenient sentence.The Ayuntamiento of Mexico City declared in 1820 that ‘many quarrels’ broke out around pulquerías, often with fatal consequences, ‘because most of the public…are armed with knives and razors’, which they were inclined to use when inebriated.

Concern that pulque consumption would lead to gambling, poor health and immorality.Belief that men squandered their wages on drink, rather than caring for their families.

Pulquerias seen as sites of political subversion.

Fears that people would congregate there and plot against the government.

Legislation

1529 - addition of herbs and roots to pulque banned.

1650s - taxes were imposed on pulque.

1693 – sale of pulque in Mexico City prohibited following serious riot.

1671 Ordinance

Stipulates that male and female drinkers in pulquerías should be segregated, in order to avoid sexual immorality.States that large numbers of people should not be allowed to congregate around a pulqueria, nor to ‘stay around after they have drunk’. Bans the use of ‘harps, guitars or other musical instruments, dances or musicians’ in pulquerias.

1792 laws

Decree that no food may be served in pulquerias.

Says all seating should be removed from pulquerias.

States that pulquerías should be exposed on 3 sides to public view, so that police could monitor their customers easily.

Imposes harsher sentences for the drunk and disorderly.

Legislation generally ineffectual.

Police corruption.

Contradiction between tax revenues and public health.